CRYING AND LYING (2023)
performance with video,  30 min

“My mother cried for forty days and forty nights.
As long as I have known her, I have known her to cry.
I used to think that I would grow up to be a different sort of woman,
that I would not cry, and that I would solve the problem of her crying.” (Sheila Heti “Motherhood” 2018)

Crying and lying are two activities with which you can reliably ruin your life. Strikingly, they are often associated with femininity. The performance casts a spotlight on some intricacies of intergenerational trauma and the narrative dimensions of the family. Even though the family as a basic principle of our social structure and as individual life choice or goal has proven to be anything but crisis-proof or safe, it nevertheless appears to the majority to have no alternative.

“So deep runs the idea that the family is the exclusive place where people are safe, where people come from, where people are made, and where people belong, it doesn’t even feel like an idea anymore.” (Sophie Lewis “Abolish the Family” 2022)

Tightly interlacing live performance and prerecorded video the artist admits publicly to her strong craving for narrative and dramaturgy. The concept of a hopefully quick, linear and progressive succession of milestones in your so called private life and career is countered by the figure of the late bloomer who hits them late, in the wrong order or never. Drawing on a range of feminist authors the performance introduces a queering of reproductive temporalities and points to ways of care, support and connection that happen outside or inspite of the family.

Developed with Jonathan Kastl and Olivia Platzer.

shown at
Phönix Theater Steckborn, CH, June 17th 2023
HilbertRaum Berlin, August 25th 2023